Amos was not our nearest neighbour. I'd only been at the farm a few days when the Indian family who were wintering in the forest, a bare mile from our door, came to visit us. We were still sitting at our midday meat, when the door was flung open, and a tall brown-skinned man in fringed deerskins strode in, followed by an old woman and a younger one. The young woman carried a child on her back, and two more children hung back in the doorway and watched us warily, until they took courage and crept up to the table. The tall man roughly pulled out the end of my bench, so I nearly went flying, and sat down next to me without a word.
‘Good day, friend,’ said Thomas, apparently not startled in the least. ‘Is there more broth, Sarah? Bring a bowl for our friend Mesquacosy. And for his family too.’
Mesquacosy's wife and mother-in-law – for so I later discovered them to be – would not sit with us, but took their portions of broth outside into the cold yard. Presently they came in again with the empty bowls, and began to wander about the place, picking up sundry items and exclaiming to each other in their own language. Meanwhile the children eagerly accepted the morsels of food that Clemency picked out for them, crowding up against her chair, and fairly snatching tid-bits of meat and cheese from her hands. When I addressed them directly they looked down shyly and would not, or could not, answer me. The family stayed about an hour and then left as suddenly as they had come, without a word. They left behind five freshly cured rabbitskins and a big bunch of sage which Clemency hung from the rafters. When I went out to the byre that evening to water the beasts I saw the prints of different-sized snowshoes leading away into the darkness of the trees, and I pondered on the strangeness of my new life.
The Indians came again several times after that, and some weeks later, when I was proficient enough on my new snowshoes, Clemency took me with her to their lodge. She kept some of our milk each day (for Clemency had charge of the dairying) for the little boy. The Indians use no milk, but when they saw cow's milk had not the disagreeable effects of other foods upon the little fellow, they were glad to take it. Clemency said this was good, because she and Thomas owed the Indians many favours for their help in past days.
At first the round Indian lodge seemed quite alien, but as I had leisure to look about I saw many things were the same as in our cabin – the dried meat and herbs hanging from the roof, the musket, axe and snowshoes by the door, the iron kettle of stew simmering over the fire. We sat on furs draped over fresh pine boughs. Mesquacosy totally ignored Clemency, but presently passed his long pipe across to me. I don't use tobacco, but in this case I read more into it, so I puffed cautiously, and stifled my coughing as best I could. He seemed pleased with that. We sat in silence, while the women were sorting some herbs on the other side of the fire, using a strange mix of tongues I did not try to follow. Presently my host spoke. I shook my head, uncomprehending. He pointed to the doorway, and spoke again. Then, with less patience, he gave me but one word: peboon – peboon.
‘He says, “It's a hard winter,’” said Clemency, without looking up.
‘Ay,’ I said. ‘It's a hard winter.’
That was the sum of our conversation, but when Clemency finally rolled the herbs she'd been given into a cloth, and stood up to go, I felt content. With most of my neighbours in Mungrisdale the talk would have been much the same. I often remembered this peaceful Indian family in the woods in after days. They had little; some years they come close to starvation, but they have an ease in their own surroundings which perhaps we have lost in our more civilised condition.
It was our custom in the evening for Thomas or I to read aloud while the women took up their work. We had read and talked over the Advices and Queries from Philadelphia (which were much the same as our own Advices and Queries from London Yearly Meeting). We also read over passages from the scriptures (mainly, by common consent, from the New Testament) and Fox's Journal, which was all the books they had in the house. I borrowed Woolman's Journal from David Willson, for it spoke to my own condition, and I was glad to share the goodness I had got from it before. Twice a copy of the Upper Canada Gazette came to us on its way round the community. Amidst its advices to farmers, it brought a page of news of Europe, notably the progress of the war in the Peninsula. I would have been discouraged from reading this at home, but in Upper Canada it felt like a link with my own country, however tenuous, even though I noticed the piece was reprinted from an American newspaper.
In Second Month Amos went down to York, and brought back a letter for Clemency from my Aunt Judith. Clemency read it to us while Thomas sat at the table patching one of his boots, and I sat whittling a porringer, for the one they had was too small to be useful, or so it seemed to me.
Philadelphia
15th day of Eleventh Month, 1811
To my dear Friend and Companion in Christ, Clemency,
When I received thy letter telling me the Lord had brought thee safe home to Yonge Street I was thankful indeed. These are troublous times, and we know not what is to come. These many years we in Great Britain have lived in the shadow of unceasing strife. Even the free Republican government enjoyed by thy own United States was born out of a calamitous and bloody war where outward weapons were used by brother against brother, citizen against citizen, friend against friend. I had thought, though, that on the uninhabited frontier where the world is yet new the Kingdom of Peace, as our Friend William Penn first envisaged it, might yet be possible.
29th Day of Eleventh Month.
News is now come of a terrible battle in the North West Territory fought on the seventh day of this same month, at a river called Tippecanoe, between a prophet of the Shawnee tribe and the governor of the Indiana Territory, one Henry Harrison. I had thought to minister this spring to our Friends at the settlement in the North West, as thee and I wished before, but Friends tell me that it is out of the question. What is worse, Friends say that it would also be unwise to approach the border between the United States and Upper Canada in the present state of unrest. And these same Friends said to me a year ago, ‘The only border we acknowledge is that made by solemn treaty with the Indians, between the settled areas of the east, and the hunting territories of the Indians in the far west.‘ Now it seems that the United States government decrees this border between settler and Indian shall stand no more, and yet on that border which lies between brother and brother, citizen and citizen, friend and friend, across the Great Lakes, there is to be a great gulf fixed as if thee and I, and hundreds of others bound by similar ties of Friendship, unity and kinship, must be summarily separated by strife and bloody war.
With the clamour of such calamitous events around me, I find myself troubled in spirit, even in our gathered Meeting for Worship here in Philadelphia. I am thinking of returning home, but the journey seems a grievous trial (I suffer much at sea) without my first Companion, who was with me before thee, my niece Rachel. She and I set out together – is it only three years ago? – both filled with zeal for the Lord's purpose, seeing always before us our Concern to bring the Comfort of our Ministry in the Lord to our Friends in the New World, and now it is come to this. When I return I must face her mother, my sister Susan. This cannot be put off much longer.
I have long held to the belief that Man is in his essence good, and that any can discover the Light Within. Yet now – can it be possible? – it seems to me to be possible – that His Kingdom may not come, for all the years that may be left to our race on earth. His will may perhaps not be done on earth as it is in heaven. These are terrible thoughts, dear Friend, and perhaps I should not write them to thee. But the paper is good, and I have no more of it if I were to wantonly destroy this one sheet that I have. Were I to do so, thee would have no letter. So let it stand.
In Friendship, and in the bountiful mercy of the Lord to thee and thine,
Judith Scott
We sat in silence for a time after Clemency finished reading. Sarah said, ‘I don't think all this travelling is a good idea; it unsettles people.’
‘
My heart grieves for Judith,’ said Clemency.
‘It looks as if thee won't be seeing thy aunt here, then,’ said Thomas. ‘Does that upset thy plans at all?’
‘No,’ I said, thinking out loud. ‘My mother wrote to Judith to say I was on my way here, but she seems not to have got the letter. I'll go back to Montreal in the spring and see what William Mackenzie's arranged for me.’
‘But Amos is right,’ said Thomas. ‘Thee could go by Georgian Bay and be there sooner.’
‘And lose track of Alan Mackenzie again? No, I'll keep my appointment.’
‘We'll miss thee sorely,’ said Sarah, laying her hands on the bulge under her pinafore, as she often did these days. ‘Thee'll miss seeing the little one.’
It would have been unkind to say that I had no mind to be in that small cabin during her confinement, nor to be kept awake by the wailing of an infant all night long1. So I kept silent, and so did Clemency, when Sarah and Thomas were saying how much they would miss me when the winter was over, and I had gone away.
1 Indeed, I could not have imagined those sleepless nights with a newborn child to be any worse than they really are.
CHAPTER 7
ON FIRST DAYS AND FOURTH DAYS WE WENT TO Meeting. I found the Meeting House harmonious and filled with Light. The lot had been planted with maple saplings, which divided the Meeting garth from the graveyard. Clemency told me that Judith and Rachel had been there for the tree planting. Judith had ministered about the trees representing the slow growth of peace, being planted, as they were, in a world fall of war. Elders expressed concern about the notion of representation, and there had been some little difficulty about that. I caused no such anxiety, for I kept silent in Meeting, and to a large extent without. At Meeting I kept to the place at the back I'd taken on the first evening. Sometimes I used to gaze out of the windows at the line of trees beyond the fields where the unclaimed forest began. When I shut my eyes I'd still see the windows burning green inside my head. There were six plain frame windows (for on First Days the partition between the men's and women's Meeting was drawn up). Each window divided the wilderness into fifteen squares, nine on the lower sash, six on the upper sash, shaped just like the lots into which the land was divided, very square and neat.
On the First Day after my arrival David Willson had invited me to his house, which lay about five miles east of the Meeting House. He lived in a cabin like the other Friends, but he and his wife had made more of a parlour, with a kitchen behind. David Willson's room had a shelf of theological works in it, and a writing desk and chair. He asked me what I'd thought about the Ministry the first evening I was among them. I'm used to being asked what sense I have of a Meeting, but I never find it an easy question.
‘I don't know,’ I said. ‘I'd never been so long away from Friends as I had that day. I was glad to hear our testimonies – ‘twas like coming home.’
‘Our testimony of Peace. The Kingdom of Peace.’ We were silent for a while. ‘What does thee think, Mark? Thee's seen enough of the world in thy travels. Did thee find peace?’
I thought about it for a bit. ‘No.’
’'The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgement in their goings. No, there is no peace in the great world. Where then is our Lord's Kingdom of Peace to be established, Mark? What thinks thee?’
‘I know not.’ I was about to say that in my own Meeting I was at peace, but then I thought about Joseph Peat, and the bill for the repairs to the roof at Gillfoot Meeting House, which still leaked. I thought about my parents, but then Rachel came into that picture, and the image of peace vanished, as the upside-down hills vanish from a lake when the waters ripple. ‘Nowhere on this earth, I think.’
’We looked for peace and there is no good, and for the time of healing, and beheld trouble.‘
I began to feel indignant. I'd been feeling quite cheerful before we sat down. ‘Just now I'm living in a house where there has been trouble and great sorrow,’ I said. ‘And yet Clemency and Thomas bring peace and healing into that. I think that's as much as anyone can do.’
‘And this is why I wished to speak with thee! For now I see clearly that the Ministry that night thee came did indeed speak to thy condition. If the Kingdom of Peace is ever to come on earth, will it not be as a second Eden in the Wilderness? Will it not be in a place far removed from the fightings and wars of the outward world? For are we not a people already set apart, because we have a great work to do in the world?’
‘Our fore-elders did a great work,’ I said. ‘I don't know about now.’
’For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before ye into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.’
When he finished speaking, silence rolled in like the tide, and I let it take me.
‘So what does thee think, Friend?’ said David Willson at last.
‘I was thinking how Daniel Priestman, when he ministers in our Meeting, reminds us that Judaea is a mountainous country just like our own Lakeland, and how thee can tell that very often from the scriptures.’ It occurred to me that this wasn't what David Willson wished to hear,1 although it was the truthful answer to his question. Trying to offer him something relevant, I said – but again it was the wrong reply – ‘I don't see the Kingdom of God being quite as fiat as Upper Canada.’
Two days later the elders Joseph Doan and Amos Armitage came to visit me, partly to accept me into Yonge Street Meeting for as long as I chose to stay, but partly to warn me that David Willson had already been disciplined more than once for his prophetic ministries, and that perhaps I should not allow myself to be led too far. Later I asked Clemency for her opinion. She laughed, and said it was naught to trouble myself over; a prophet seldom had honour in his own country.
‘Thee thinks David Willson is a prophet?’
If Clemency ever sat down that winter, it was at her spinning. When the four of us gathered by the fireside in the evening, it was always to the whirr and hum of her spinning wheel. They made their own flax (though not their wool), which seemed to me a marvel of industry.2Clemency watched the thread running under her finger as she answered my question, ‘I know not. Thy sister Rachel had much discourse with David. The trouble is, he's ministered in Meeting – and this more than once – saying that outward religion, even the Bible itself, speaks not to his condition. Thee can imagine what Friends think of that.’
‘But he quoted Isaiah to me!’
‘Oh yes, he quotes Isaiah. In no wise does he ignore scripture altogether. Only he says there is no true enlightenment but from the Light that burns within. And this light need have no words to it – it need not resort to any outward scripture – but if it truly burns it will make such a conflagration in the heart it will light every man that comes near to it. And this will be the light of the Kingdom of Peace, in which the days of our innocence will be restored.’
‘And we won't have to worry about the price of corn either?’
She chuckled. ‘Thee sounds like uncle Amos. But I do wonder – thy sister Rachel listened much to David Willson. She used to repeat his words, saying that outward forms meant nothing, and that we minded too much the petty regulations of our Society. She started reading Leviticus to me – the lists of rules for the Israelites in the desert – and I had to laugh with her. She said surely all rulings concerning temporal matters had their time and place, and once they were outmoded – outgrown, rather – they served only to conceal the true Light, which lighteth every man coming into the world, and so we had not to listen to disciplines from without, but take counsel only with the promptings of our own hearts.’
She looked to see if I had understood the import of her words, and nodded at me. ‘Thee sees, doesn't thee?’
‘If I were not a F
riend I would strangle this man! How many young maids has he talked to in this manner?’
‘It's true that women seem to like him well. Some women, I should say. Our women's Meeting too has been much divided. Me, I just think there's enough to worry about. Sometimes I think, well, we've had War, Famine and Pestilence. Must we also be troubled by Specious Controversy?’ She grinned suddenly, and I smiled too. ‘I shouldn't have said that! Levity is my worst sin!’ Her remorse startled me; it was quite genuine. Sometimes I found her lightning changes of mood unrestful. ‘I'm serious, Mark. I've been disciplined for it often enough – oh, all my life. Mother would be disappointed in me still. I had a cousin in Catawissa – she and I . . . oh, sometimes in Meeting when we were younger, we would catch one another's eye, and . . . She it was that died of smallpox. Levity is an evil thing, Mark. I pray every day for deliverance from it.’
‘It would be a sad world if thee found naught in it to laugh at.’
‘I've laughed too much, Friend. God knows, I've been punished for it, and the temptation besets me yet. But Rachel . . . ‘ Her voice trailed away.
‘Please,’ I said after a moment or two. ‘Tell me about Rachel.’
‘She was the best friend I ever had.’ Her vehemence surprised me. ‘I hadn't had a friend – a real friend – since I left Catawissa. I'd never had time to go exploring either, but when Rachel asked, we were allowed whole days by ourselves – on my own I'd never have been allowed. There are Indian paths all over the forest – oh, some days we went miles. It was fall, and we used to come home with full baskets. I guess that's why no one said we were being idle. Mesquacosy's people showed us good places, and what plants and berries to pick. I could talk to them a little, but Rachel was determined to learn their language properly, because she had a concern to minister to the Indians in the west. Somehow she didn't pick up the words as easily as I did. She used to get really frustrated about it, but when we were alone we'd practise saying Indian words together. And we'd talk – we always found plenty to talk about.’ She paused, and said abruptly. ‘Rachel's very honest. She's about the most honest person I ever met.’
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